A Tokyo Guide from LVMH Prize Nominee Facetasm’s Hiromichi Ochiai

Facetasm, Hiromichi Ochiai’s nine-year-old mens- and womenswear line, is the first Japanese label to become a finalist for the LVMH Prize. (The prize committee will be announcing the 2016 winner in Paris tomorrow.) To gain insight into Ochiai’s line, and to learn a bit about the designer, Vogue.com got together with the 39-year-old Tokyoite and asked him about his favorite places in his native city.

At his suggestion, we met at City Country City, or CCC, a café and record store in the hip neighborhood of Shimokitazawa. Ochiai, who was preparing for his trip to Paris, seemed to be in good spirits. He wasn’t nervous, he said through a translator, about the LVMH Prize or about his first Paris runway show, which he’ll hold on June 22 for his Spring 2017 menswear collection.

He didn’t want to give too much away about the upcoming collection, but said that after he presented his Spring 2016 menswear in Milan at the invitation of Giorgio Armani, the press Ochiai received surprised him. “Before, I thought I was doing high-end fashion, but after the show in Milan, people said it was a very street style,” Ochiai explained. He realized there was a gap between his perception of Facetasm and the way others see the brand. Because of that realization, he’s being very careful not to make his next menswear collection too street. “It’s not a negative—I think it’s a positive, because out of this gap there’s another style I can create between high-end fashion and streetwear.”

Here, Ochiai’s guide to some of his favorite places in Tokyo.

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City Country City (CCC)

Photo: Courtesy of ISETAN PARK net / @isetanoarknet

1) City Country City (CCC)

Tatsuro Hirata, an old friend of Ochiai’s, runs this decade-old record shop and café. The two were classmates in high school, and—along with their friend Shin Murayama, a designer and artist with ties to the Japanese clothing company Nepenthes—attended Bunka Fashion College, which has produced some of the most celebrated Japanese designers, including Yohji Yamamoto and Junya Watanabe.

Shimokitazawa, Ochiai says, has a very strong culture of rock and music, and for him, CCC embodies this. The shop sells used LPs, but Hirata also helps with the music selection for Facetasm’s shows—so to Ochiai, CCC is a very special place. It’s open till 1 in the morning, and in the month leading up to a fashion show, when things can get quite busy at his atelier, the designer will head to CCC at night so that he and Hirata can choose the music for the runway. Ochiai always finds it inspiring to be there, he says—especially at such a hectic time.

In addition to its many vintage-clothing and used-record shops, Shimokitazawa boasts a number of small theaters and cinemas, “so it’s a very artistic place” that appeals to him, says Ochiai. He’s been hanging out in the area for many years—since his college days at Bunka. Earlier, in high school, he says, he used to spend his time in Harajuku. Back then, when A Bathing Ape and Undercover were just coming into their own, that neighborhood was really happening. BAPE’s shop at the time was even smaller than CCC, Ochiai says, and often had a line of people waiting to get in.Hosozawa 4F, 2-12-13 Shimo-kitazawa, Setagaya-ku

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LiquidRoom

Photo: Courtesy of Rie Morioka / @mo_rie

2) LiquidRoomBefore he had his own clothing line, music was very important to Ochiai. When he worked at a textile company after graduating from Bunka—his first fashion-industry job—he’d sometimes travel to Osaka, over 300 miles away, to see the legendary Japanese psychedelic noise band Boredoms play in their hometown. In Tokyo, a favorite live venue of Ochiai’s is Liquidroom, a concert space opened in 1994 that used to be in Kabukicho, a nightlife district in Shinjuku, and is now in Ebisu. To this day, members of Boredoms and other notable bands regularly play shows there.

Since launching Facetasm, music now serves a different purpose for Ochiai. He no longer just engages with it as a fan—it serves as inspiration to him, too. At CCC, Hirata writes descriptions for many of his favorite records, and Ochiai gets ideas from discovering different groups this way, regardless of their style. For his first collection, in 2007, he used the American noise-rock duo Lightning Bolt for the sound track. “Because I don’t stick to rules,” Ochiai says, “I can choose music that people don’t use for fashion shows.”3-16-6 Higashi, Shibuya-ku

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Golden Gai

Photo: Courtesy of Alessandra Uy / @alessandrauy_

3) Golden Gai
“I love Shinjuku,” the designer says. He used to go drinking there often in Golden Gai, a six-block neighborhood of several hundred miniature, jewel box–like bars, some of which have very particular themes or organizing principles. One is based on the artist Matthew Barney’s Cremaster cycle; another one is Kodoji, where Daido Moriyama and other famous Japanese photographers like to hole up; and there’s La Jetée, an extended tribute to the work of the French film essayist Chris Marker.

“I like Golden Gai because it’s very old,” Ochiai says, “but at the same time, there are people of many nationalities and different styles.” Also, he doesn’t run into other fashion designers there, which may be a plus: “Most of them drink in Nakameguro,” a neighborhood south of Harajuku, Ochiai says.

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Toro

Photo: Courtesy of Toro Vintage Clothing

4) ToroSince he was 18, Ochiai’s been going to Toro, a revered shop stocking new and vintage clothing that moved, two months ago, from Harajuku to Sendagaya. Rinko Kikuchi and other famous Japanese people with a good sense of style, Ochiai says, frequent the store. Although he likes the clothes there—the shop has carried pieces by the now-shuttered Comme des Garçons label Tao, of which he was a fan—Ochiai doesn’t gravitate to Toro for design inspiration. Instead, going there these days brings him back to an earlier time in his life—there’s a nostalgic element to his visits.

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Yogoro

Photo: Courtesy of Yeni / @fitfllo

5) Yogoro“I adore curry,” Ochiai says, so he goes to many restaurants around Harajuku that specialize in the dish. He says he likes curry more than ramen—that other Japanese go-to—and often eats at Yogoro, a curry house that’s “about thirty seconds away from” the Facetasm shop and atelier in Harajuku. The designer is pretty agnostic about his favorite variety, he explains: “If it says curry, I like it.”2-20-10 Jingumae, 1F Komatsu Bldg., Shibuya

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Uplink

Photo: Courtesy of Uplink / @uplink_film

6) Uplink
Ochiai used to have a lot of graffiti-writer friends, and would pass the time with them at a succession of street-culture hangouts. These would, of course, change all the time, as his friends were eager to stay one step ahead of the police. But one place in particular that they’d frequent was Uplink, a tiny movie theater in Shibuya. It’s been around since 1987, and has a notable film-programming history. In recent times, he says, it was the first venue to screen works by the Canadian director Xavier Dolan in Tokyo.

Back when he was 22 or 23 and working at that textile company, Ochiai says, “I used to skip work and would go to Uplink with my graffiti friends.” Of course, this was long before he had his own fashion line, and all the responsibilities that running Facetasm entails.Totsune Bldg. 1F, 37-18 Udagawacho, Shibuya-ku